By Jennifer Beauvais, LMHC
There's been a shift in main stream thinking around spiritual stuff, and wowowow, has it been invigorating. I am seeing that we, as Western culture, are finally exploring our own concepts for the structure of reality. This is important because it means that more and more of us are learning to trust our own clairvoyance muscles, our own experiences of spiritual epiphany, what quantum physics has to say about the field, and how we experience that field in our bodies.
Some call this stuff “woo woo.” And yeah, some of it is. But our culture has few clarifying terms for experiencing higher vibrations of energy. And the ability to do so is a birthright…it is a muscle that each of us possesses and can learn to strengthen at any time. We cut ourselves off from our birthright, from the concrete reality of higher states of existence, when we call such things “woo woo.” Massive bummer, y’all.
There are many wisdom traditions in the world that have language for the larger multivibrational, multidimensional reality. Joseph Campbell– the eminent Comparative Mythologist who gave us “the Hero’s Journey”-- has clarified these multicultural descriptions as “mythologies.”
We tend to think of myths as some ethereal story with no firm basis of reality. But according to Joseph Campbell, Myths are profoundly important tools that help us understand our location in time, space and place. Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is this era of my life about? How do I relate to the greater cosmos? What do I contribute to my community? These are not ethereal questions—we really want to know these things to feel we have a reason for pushing on. We can sense there is more to our existence than we can see, and some cultures have treated this as concrete truth, allowing them to explore subtle energetics more thoroughly.
Before he died, Campbell warned that we are a society without a mythology. He said we are in a “free fall” into the future with no stories or examples of how to make sense of place in this world, to the cosmos, and in relationship to each other. Without this larger picture, our collective purpose becomes neurotic, shallow, and destructive.
Campbell’s basic rules of a myth have helped me to look at religious philosophies, texts, and teachings with awe and constantly-evolving understanding, as well as the notion to relate them to the scientific and psychological understandings of our day.
1. As mentioned, myths are created to help us make sense of our location, our relationship, to our place in the world, in our culture, our communities, and to our divinity.
2. Myths are written in the most scientific, up-to-date language of the time.
3. The linguistic of myths totally reflects the culture that creates them. They are written in the constructs and imagery that are instantly recognizable and familiar to a culture
For example, Buddhist texts from 2500 years ago subjectively describe everything from psychology to how our bodies and mind form from the quantum field, but in the linguistics and imagery of a meditative culture living on a high Tibetan plateau before electron microscopes.
Have they discovered truth about reality? Yes! Will their descriptions of it immediately make sense to Westerners? Probably not!
It’s not that we haven’t tried. Westerners, in an attempt for meaning, can try to appropriate mythologies from other times and spaces, but may have no direct connection to them. We try to take out-of-date or culturally misattuned mythologies (i.e. native American spirituality, the Bible, Buddhist texts, etc.) without a deciphering key to help us understand them in our own terms. This can lead to a sense of disconnection or great effort to feeling our own higher vibrations and energies.
We have had to work hard to break through our own collective religious and historical roots that have shut down, and sometimes demonized, our sensory and subtle sensory perceptions of the phenomenological world. Until we can feel in our own bodies and minds that extrasensory perception is real and mundane, it will be hard for us to understand what the wisdom traditions are trying to tell us about our inherent divinity.
But we are inherently connected to all that is. The truth is in our bodies, in our brains, in our own psyches. We have a direct connection to what mystics have been describing for eons. Their words are merely suggestions to help validate it is possible to remember. Teachings from Jesus, the Bhuddas (yes, plural), Mohammed, Confucius, and masters or Western culture have never heard of, give us tips how to do it.
For a long time, those using their subtle senses to tap into different levels of the quantum fields have been regarded as “woo-woo.” And this is still greatly the case. But something is shifting. More and more social media coverage of things like past life regressions, clairvoyant abilities, grounded psychedelic assisted therapies, exposure to mindfulness and meditation, quantum physics, and a greater affirmation of curiosity is leading to a shifting collective landscape. People are talking about it online and to each other. We are normalizing that miracles can happen. We are starting to accept the idea the universe may have more characters than we thought. Our idea of what is possible is collectively expanding.
Now, when we have extraordinary perceptual experiences-- a visit from a passed love one, or a vision of the structure of the multiverse-- we are more prone to accept there could be something real about it, rather than excuse it as crazy. Yes, there is work to do in order to learn discernment and energetic boundaries, but advancement if more possible with more collective permission.
We are starting to find language for our place in the universe based on our own direct experiences. We are regaining our birthright to deeper connection and multidimensionality. We are finally mythologizing.